cried in a voice half-choked with rage. "Do you know that this man, and
this man alone, stood forth in the great Hall of the Louvre, and when
even the King flinched, justified the murder of our people? After that
is he to go free?"

"At your hands," La Tribe answered quietly. "You alone of our people
must not pursue him." He would have added more, but Tignonville would
not listen.

Brooding on his wrongs behind the wall of the Arsenal, he had let hatred
eat away his more generous instincts. Vain and conceited, he fancied
that the world laughed at the poor figure he had cut; and the wound in
his vanity festered until nothing would serve but to see the downfall of
his enemy. Instant pursuit, instant vengeance--only these, he fancied,
could restore him in his fellows' eyes.

In his heart he knew what would become him better. But vanity is a
potent motive: and his conscience, even when supported by La Tribe,
struggled but weakly. From neither would he hear more.

"You have travelled with him, until you side with him!" he cried
violently. "Have a care, monsieur, have a care, lest we think you
papist!" And walking over to the men, he bade them saddle; adding a sour
word which turned their eyes, in no friendly gaze, on the minister.

After that La Tribe said no more. Of what use would it have been?

But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm which
the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste for the
business waxed. The summer lightning which presently began to play
across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream, between which
and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his companions; and
these, in their turn, shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise
towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the minister's
mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise: the stealthy entrance
through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the
slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he had lived for
days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the arguments he had
addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul.

In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man,
fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his
eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark
of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St.
Agnes's Chape